Bare Lit 2016: in retrospect

I had a spectacularly good time at Bare Lit, the UK’s first literary festival celebrating the works of BAME writers. It was SUPER fun.

At least I was having fun

I was on the SFF panel, (Re)writing Pasts & Futures, along with authors Tendai Huchu, Haris Durrani and Tosin Coker, moderated by Patrick Vernon. I really enjoyed it — entertaining readings, engaged audience, great questions. And while it was definitely what I think of as a “diversity panel” — we weren’t talking about a general topic, like how SFF draws inspiration from other genres, or Epic Fantasies We Have Loved — it made a big difference talking about being a non-white writer of SFF not only on an all-PoC panel but to a majority PoC audience. I felt like you could go more interesting places with the discussion.

I could go on and on about it … but I won’t, because you can watch the panel online!

All the panels/talks were recorded and are being uploaded to the Bare Lit site. You can check the videos out here: Past Events.

The super entertaining talk by Catherine Johnson and Peter Kalu about writing for children/YA (sudden drop in quality of photo due to fact that this was, again, taken by my phone)

I was kind of worried before the festival because I didn’t really know anyone there and was scared I’d be too uncool for anyone to want to talk to me. But in fact it was simultaneously relaxed and exhilarating — I had lots of nice conversations with strangers, from geeking out about Hamilton to discussing books to recommend to children. I’ve been to arts/cultural events before where the performers and attendees were all/majority non-white, of course, but it felt different and special to be part of a festival like this in the very heart of London.

I felt incredibly privileged to be there and am very grateful to the organisers for creating such a great space.

All the nice photos in this post were taken by Wasi Daniju and are shared with her permission. The video recordings of Bare Lit were filmed and edited by founder and filmmaker Samantha Asumadu — information about commissions can be found here.

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